An Angel Investor On Two Key Differences Between Male And Female Entrepreneurs

Joanne Wilson
is an angel investor, and her investment thesis is simple — she
invests in people and real businesses, not ideas.

Within that, though, there's a wide range of possibilities. She
addressed those in a recent interview with finance career site,
OneWire for its
video series Open
Door.

As for the people part of her investing, Wilson, —who has
invested in or advised 35 startups including
Catchafire, Dailyworth, and Gotham Gym — tends to gravitate
toward female entrepreneurs.

"I think women in particular build businesses that fulfill voids
in their lives," she told OneWire CEO Skiddy von Stade. "And I
also think women are more team oriented than men, and they are
also more realistic in regards to what their business can do,
sometimes to the point that they don't see how big they can be.
Whereas men... have a very sort of bravado look at their
businesses."

He posed the question to a woman working as a hedge fund analyst,
and she was kind enough to allow him to share her thoughts. She
gave him a wide range of reasons, from the fact that women were
disproportionately laid off during the crisis, to the fact that
female analysts aren't paid enough early in their careers to put
down the $1 to $2 million of their own cash backers like
BlackRock want to see before they shell out.